A couple of days ago I read one of those books that reaches deep into your heart and wrenches you. I was in my daughter’s brand-new first grade classroom, and the first big meeting between the class parents and the teacher was over, and people were milling around and talking and getting to know each other. In Waldorf education, a single teacher stays with a class without interruption from the first grade through the eighth grade, so at this meeting everyone knew that they were laying the groundwork for relationships that had to stand the test of time. Of course, many of us parents knew each other already from last year’s Kindergarten, and most of us knew our class teacher from earlier work she’d done with the school, and the informal parties and gatherings we’d had over the summer — but still…

I found myself over by the bookshelf. I wondered what books my daughter’s teacher had picked out to get started with — no doubt books with beautiful pictures and simple words for early readers… Here was a magnificent ancient edition of the Billy Goats Gruff, with a neat pop-up mechanism that allowed the reader to see the troll encountering each of the goats one at a time. The biggest billy goat Gruff looked so terrifying that I felt absolutely sorry for the troll.

My eye was drawn to a small paper book called Komo the Shepherd Boy, by Martha Hackman (Green Tiger Press, 1982). The illustrations were stunning — bright watercolors in a sort of “Yellow Submarine” late-60’s style, by Aura Cesari. I thumbed through the pages, and saw that there was quite a bit of text. Obviously, our teacher intended this to be a book that she would read aloud to the class. I was surprised, because in our experience Waldorf teachers tell stories completely from memory, for a number of reasons — perhaps most importantly to allow the children to form their own pictures in their heads, uninfluenced by pictures in a book, and to allow themselves to fully engage the children as they’re speaking…

My eye was caught by a few key phrases. I immediately read the whole thing in two minutes. Read the rest of this entry »

Asking the Priestess

Not long ago Ellen Evert Hopman, a druid priestess with whom I’m acquainted, was asked, “What is the essence of druid practice?”

The asker was a very old friend who had just had a powerful mystical experience, and came to her for help. They talked for most of the day, having tea, walking in the forest, and so forth.

At first, when he asked her this question, she was speechless. Ellen is a priestess of great experience, a master herbalist and researcher in the old ways; so if anyone knows Druidism, she does. But Druidism is not a cohesive faith. There is no World Archdruid, no Universal Grove; there is no Druid Bible or Founding Father; there are no druid missionaries carrying the True Faith around the world. Each druid is called, one by one, alone, to the path, by whatever gods, guides, or spirits there be. So naturally there’s a certain amount of disagreement about what the essence of Druidism is. Read the rest of this entry »